Terrible Beauty presents a unique narrative of the twentieth century. Unlike more conventional histories, where the focus is on political events and personalities, on wars, treaties and elections, this book concentrates on the ideas that made the century so rich, rewarding and provocative. Beginning with four seminal ideas which were introduced in 1900 - the unconscious, the gene, the quantum and Picasso's first paintings in Paris - the book brings together the main areas of thought and juxtaposes the most original and influential ideas of our time in an immensely readable narrative. From the creation of plastic to Norman Mailer, from the discovery of the 'Big Bang' to the Counterculture, from Relativity to Susan Sontag, from Proust to Salman Rushdie, and Henri Bergson to Saul Bellow, the book's range is encyclopedic. We meet in these pages the other twentieth century, the writers, the artists, the scientists and philosophers who were not cowed by the political and military disasters raging around them, and produced some of the most amazing and rewarding ideas by which we live. Terrible Beauty, endlessly stimulating and provocative, affirms that there was much more to the twentieth century than war and genocide.

彼得·沃森

（Peter Watson，1943— ）

英國思想史學者，曾任劍橋大學麥剋唐納考古研究所研究員，《新社會》雜誌副主編，為《泰晤士報》、《紐約時報》、《觀察傢》等報紙撰寫過專欄，以拒絕簡化的恢宏思想史作品聞名於西方世界，著有《思想史：從火到弗洛伊德》、《20世紀思想史：從弗洛伊德到互聯網》、《德國天纔》、《大分離：新舊大陸分道揚鑣的曆史》等。